


Fireworks

by EleenaDume



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Coruscant (Star Wars), Established Relationship, F/M, Fusion of Star Wars Legends and Disney Canon, Living Together, Oneshot, Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Protective Ezra, Struggling, War Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23690407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EleenaDume/pseuds/EleenaDume
Summary: One year has passed since the battle of Endor. Ezra and Sabine are on Coruscant, where slowly, a New Republic government is being established.One evening, what should have been a happy celebration instead turns into a painful reminder that neither of them will ever be able to live an entirely normal life again after everything that has happened to them.But as long as they have each other to get through it together, they will be alright.
Relationships: Ezra Bridger & Sabine Wren, Ezra Bridger/Sabine Wren
Comments: 3
Kudos: 37





	Fireworks

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there :)
> 
> Quick heads up before we get started to avoid confusion: if I use »« instead of regular quotation marks, it means the person is thinking something and not saying it out loud.
> 
> Also, it is mentioned in this story that Sabine’s parents have passed away (among some other things that are not canon compliant). This story is based off of a story-verse I started writing on several years ago, and as the only comment we got on what happened to Sabine’s parents for the first several seasons was that the Empire did something to them, I eventually decided on her family being killed by the Empire some time prior to the tv-series. This was already well established and also somewhat important in my fanon by the time we learned what actually happened to her family, and even though I did eventually change a couple of details around to include Tristan, Sabine’s parents as well as the majority of her family remained dead in this particular AU.

One year had passed since the end of the war. 

Sabine and Ezra had followed Leia’s request and moved to Coruscant a couple of weeks ago.

It was dark outside, but the city lights kept the nights from ever growing quite as dark as it had been in their apartment on Mandalore.

Sometimes Sabine struggled to fall asleep, missing and longing for the dark of her home and its smaller, quieter cities as all of Coruscant’s never ending light made her head ache and refused to leave her alone even behind closed curtains.

She missed Mandalore desperately – her friends and companions there were missed just as dearly. 

But she knew coming here hadn’t even been a matter of choice. 

Ending a war on the battlefield was one thing. Ending it in people’s minds, the way they thought, spoke and acted was an entirely different matter.

The new government barely existed at the moment – only a few systems had immediately joined the New Republic after its formation. Chandrila, Kashyyyk and Naboo were among the few worlds that were already represented in the senate.

As a descendant of a former queen of Naboo, Leia had offered to represent its‘ people if they wanted her to... and they‘d accepted her as a well-known face of the rebellion and a war hero.

It was, however, strikingly obvious to anyone that knew her personally, how much it pained her to not be able to represent the world she grew up on... even if she did also do her best to represent the ones that had survived Alderaan’s destruction.

The New Republic needed more worlds that supported it if it wanted to be taken seriously as a government. More loud voices that spoke up and made the galaxy hear what they offered.

Still... she wasn’t sure she could actually handle Leia’s request.

»Getting Mandalore to join the New Republic?«

She could think of a bunch of people that would’ve had a hearty laugh at this joke, and she guessed her parents would have been among them, had they still been alive.

She’d achieved many things, but she wasn’t sure if she was up to the task ahead of her.

To outsiders, she seemed strong... a warrior that was undaunted, even unbreakable.

There were very few people that knew about the broken girl underneath her armor... underneath the facade she’d put up so many years ago.

Ezra was one of them. 

There probably wasn’t a single person in the universe that knew quite as well just how vulnerable she was as he did – and at the same time, there wasn’t a person that had seen his vulnerability the way she had.

They had stood by each other through the toughest times of their lives, and and even if they hadn’t always physically been able to stand side by side, they’d always been connected – even if they were light years apart.

Their bond had been forged by shared rituals and memories, as well as by the pain they’d shared, and it was a bond far too strong to ever be broken by something as trivial as time or distance.

She squeezed his hand.

He had been a fixture in her life for so many years now that it was often hard to imagine that there had been a time when she didn’t know him. A time when it had only been her and Ketsu and Tristan.

Today, they weren’t on their way to get a job done. Leia had promised to give her time to consider everything as well as time to get settled.

And that was exactly what they were doing. 

They were walking through the city, on their way to buy the groceries they would need the following week. 

It wasn’t an issue to go shopping relatively late... few of the stores on this planet ever closed.

All of a sudden, a loud bang interrupted the usual street noises of the city planet, followed by a second and a third one.

»Blaster shots. Grenades.«

Sabine threw herself on the ground in a knee-jerk reaction and Ezra immediately covered her body with his.

There was another bang, then another. It didn’t seem to stop.

The two of them stayed down, Sabine covering her head with her hands as Ezra held her close.

»I‘m right here with you. I‘ll protect you. I won’t let anything happen to you.«

Some time passed until they dared to lift their heads again. There was no destruction visible anywhere, instead, a small crowd had formed around them.

“I‘m sorry, are you okay? Are you hurt?”, a young woman asked as she stepped out of the crowd and held out her hand to help him up. 

“N-no, I...” he stuttered, not really knowing what to say.

Ezra accepted the help gratefully, then gave his girlfriend a leg-up.

Fireworks. It was just fireworks.

Ezra would’ve laughed in relief if the situation hadn’t been as terrible.

»These people are celebrating the one-year anniversary of the battle of Endor, and we... we immediately assumed the worst.«

There was another bang, and the young couple once again jumped with fright, despite now knowing the source of the noise.

All of a sudden, there was nothing but pain left in her once fond memory of the first firework they’d watched together back on Lothal so many years ago.

»How did something so beautiful turn into something so terrible?«

The young man put his arm around her and ran his fingers through her hair.

There was a good reason she reacted this badly to this kind of sound, and she needed to be reminded that she wasn’t alone – that he was right there with her.

He knew that all she could think of was getting away from the crowd, and that she hated how many people had just seen how vulnerable she really was.

The groceries stopped mattering in an instant.

“Come on, let’s go back home. We can go shopping tomorrow.”

He pushed through the crowd, took her hand and pulled her after him.

Both of their faces had turned a couple shades whiter since the first bang.

Ezras hands were shaking – he only realized how much they were when Sabine squeezed them even tighter, as she was suddenly the one comforting him.

“I‘m with you. Nothing will happen to us. Everything will be okay.”

They‘d always needed each other, helped each other through hard times, and that hadn‘t changed until this day.

That was one of the reasons why their relationship worked.

Even if the entire universe threatened to crumble around them, they knew they weren’t alone. They had each other. They always would.

Their way home was short – they were only a couple of streets away.

They forced themselves to lift their heads and look up at the sky regularly to assure themselves that it was only fireworks and that they weren’t in any kind of danger, but despite that, both of them winced at every bang.

It was only when they entered their apartment, where the walls dampened the noise of the fireworks, that the two of them managed to enjoy it a little.

They both took off their jackets and then laid down on the couch together.

She placed her head on his chest, and he put his arms around her.

The touch calmed Sabine, and it helped him calm down to have something for his shaking hands to hold onto.

For a while, they just stared through glass front, watching the colors that were dancing in the sky.

“It would be so beautiful if we weren’t this broken,” the mandalorian mumbled after a while, still not managing to look away from the view outside the window.

She wanted to cry, but the suffocating emptiness inside of her made her too numb.

She couldn’t shake the image of people staring at them as they threw themselves onto the ground.

“The way we reacted... that’s not normal, Ezra. We’re not normal. We’ll never be normal again.” 

She developed these thoughts further. 

“What are we? Criminals? Murderers? War heroes? All of this is part of who we are, but most of all, we’re broken kids that spent the war losing more than anyone else, and ourselves along with it. The ones that they call heroes, that they look up to... are the ones the war tore apart. Even if we managed to let go, we wouldn’t be able to forget... to stop seeing everything that we saw on the battlefield in the streets, despite it not being there. Nobody who’s been to war can detach from these memories completely... even if everything you love is still waiting for you at home.“

They both knew there was a part of them that would never leave the battlefield, no matter how far away they got from it physically.

He squeezed her hand, as finally, the tears started falling from her eyes.

There was nothing more horrible to him than hearing the despair in her voice as she spoke. 

There were too many horrible memories brought to the surface along with it.

“As long as we’re broken together, that’s alright. We have each other. I love you. That’s all I’ll ever need,” he explained, holding her closely, hoping and praying she wouldn’t look up and realize he was crying as well.

That once again, he couldn’t be strong when she needed him to.

They were both covered in scars, both physically and mentally, and their peace and calm was in each other’s arms, as it had always been.

»I’m sorry, Sabine. I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you from this.«

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this a little, feedback would be much appreciated.
> 
> I’m sorry if the order of uploads is kind of confusing, I’m kind of just translating the things I like instead of the things that would chronologically make the most sense (some of my older stories need serious work), so there might be stuff referenced here that hasn’t yet happened in any other oneshot/story I uploaded. But I am trying to just pick stories first that can be understood mostly without context.
> 
> Feel free to ask if anything is too confusing, though.


End file.
